Ramblings on Microsoft virtualization (Hyper-V) and storage

01/31/2014

So it looks like Microsoft has finally found their next CEO after a 6 month search as Satya Nadella is rumored to be promoted to this position shortly.

According to many of the articles I have read, Nadella is a true technologist with experience working in Microsoft's Online Services Division, Business Division and most recently the Server and Tools Business. I attended a meeting several years ago in which Satya was present and my memory of him is someone who isn't very loud or overpowering but he was thoughtful, focused and had the attention of the room.

Satya has worked at Microsoft for 22 years so he clearly understands the unique dynamics of the company. Being a true technologist and his knowledge of Microsoft were certainly two attributes that helped him win the job.

If these rumors are true and Mr. Nadella is the new CEO, there are several interesting points that come to mind:

What Took So Long?

After a search that took half a year and included several top external candidates, they settled on an internal candidate. That begs the question, if he was the right guy all along why did they look outside the company and why did it take them so long to come to this conclusion? Of course choosing the right person to lead a $77B company is no easy task, but if the person you eventually select is right under your nose shouldn't you have been grooming him for this role all along?

Hey You Get Onto My Cloud

It's no secret that over the past several years Microsoft has been "all-in" on the Cloud. After being late to several other trends (such as tablets & mobile) Microsoft jumped on the cloud opportunity and quickly spun up Azure services building out Microsoft pod based datacenters that almost qualify for their own zip codes. Microsoft built a flavor of Azure for SQL Server databases and offered many of their popular Enterprise applications such as Exchange, SharePoint and Office as online services.

While there has been some success with these offerings, Microsoft must be disappointed by the lack of adoption of their Azure services and has shifted their message from offering Azure services for hosting primary data to being a backup and DR repository. Most people I have talked to in and around Microsoft agree that while they can't abandon the cloud all together they should realize that products such as Windows, SQL Server and Collaboration (in addition to gaming and mobile) are still important to customers and are revenue streams that shouldn't be ignored. While the cloud business will continue to grow, it won't replace the local datacenter anytime soon.

But Microsoft is selecting a CEO who has been the face of Microsoft's cloud business. Satya Nadella has experience running Microsoft's Online Services Division and most recently their Server and Tools Business which is responsible for System Center and Hyper-V, key technologies to Microsoft's cloud business. Nadella also has been involved with Microsoft Office 365 and played some key roles to the growth of Azure.

Looking at the Forecast

So what is the future of Microsoft? Nadella is only the third CEO in the company's history and there is still confusion as to what roles Gates and Ballmer will have as board members. If Nadella is free to run the company as he sees fit, the future may get even cloudier at Microsoft and possibly even stormy as Microsoft transforms to focus on online services and consumer products upsetting their traditionalist followers. If Microsoft does commit to the cloud will revenue start to vaporize as they lose ground to online providers Amazon, Google or even new startups?

It's obvious Microsoft choose a leader who knew the company inside and out which will save time getting an outsider up to speed or going through messy re-organizations. Nadella is a Microsoft veteran who will instill confidence in a company that was getting nervous as the CEO search started to drag on. Whatever the future holds this was a safe choice and probably the best one before people started to wonder, why is it so hard to find someone who would want to take on the role of Microsoft CEO at this point?

10/22/2013

Remember back in the day when you would spend countless hours designing your storage array to determine how many hard drives you would need to meet the performance needs of your applications? In many cases you would design an elaborate storage layout including RAID groups, volumes and LUNS complete with color-coding to keep track of all the different data types and drives that are being managed.

EMC's 60,000 Mailbox Microsoft ESRP 2013 Submission

It sure looks impressive but your proposed storage layout shouldn't require a degree in graphic arts! In some cases "simple" tools were created to help design storage for optimal performance such as this one shown here but you have to wonder, is this a storage calculation or determining the trajectory to the moon?!

Exchange Storage Sizing Tool

Wait a minute, what's that? You mean you still do this today?!

Luckily this is becoming a trend of the past because flash based storage is the future and the future is here.

The reason storage admins went through all of this work is because traditional spinning disks are limited in performance so customers are forced to use complex spreadsheets just to keep track of the racks and racks of storage arrays and various disk types needed to meet the capacity and performance requirements of their applications.

At Pure Storage we have developed an all-flash array that dramatically improves performance at a cost that is equal to or better than disk based storage! Inline de-duplication, compression and thin provisioning helps to ensure you are storing one copy of the data so you get the best return from your investment.

On average, applications run 10 times faster on our flash arrays than with traditional spinning disks. For customers who run SQL Server, this has resulted in reducing the time it takes to run various processes from days to hours or hours to minutes. With sub-millisecond latencies you can improve response times to the application and stop worrying about managing the storage array for optimal performance.

This is literally changing the way companies do businessand why Pure customers are just as passionate about our technology as our employees are!

Best of all, there aren't any complex spreadsheets or formulas. Pure Storage uses a single storage pool optimized for performance and utilization with resources within the array virtualized. While you can still create volumes as logical units for organizing data from the server to the array, it isn't necessary since you will receive the same level of performance and data protection regardless of how you carve up the array (for an excellent write up on how this works I recommend the following blog post: http://www.purestorage.com/blog/defying-the-laws-of-luns/).

So are you ready to throw out the complex spreadsheets, sizing tools and advanced training classes for designing and managing a storage array? Join the Pure movement and see why customers like Mattersight are excited to significantly improve performance, reduce overall costs and simplify management of their storage array!

10/17/2013

I've always liked this time of the year. The weather starts changing and you can feel a cool breeze in the air. Leaves are changing colors and you can reflect on your summer adventures while thinking ahead to chilly evening by the fire and the upcoming holidays. Some people aren't ready to let go of summer but unfortunately change is inevitable.

And like the seasons, people must change too which brings me to this blog post. Last month I decided to say goodbye to EMC. This had less to do with my previous company and more about the opportunity in front of me. I recently joined Pure Storage because I believe that they have an amazing product that will change business processes; because I believe in their management team; and because I believe Pure and the all flash array will be a distruptive technology in the industry!

What makes Pure Storage interesting to me is that not only are they able to deliver unheard of performance by building an all flash array from the ground up but that they have other unique advantages they have built into their technology.

First is in-line deduplication and compression. This means customers can store more data without taking up valuable space on the array. In many cases we see 4 to 1 or higher deduplication ratios for common data types including databases. Customers love this because not only do we deliver faster peformance and lower latency than traditional spinning disk arrays but we can reduce the floorspace needed in the datacenter helping to drive down the overall costs associated with running storage.

The other unique advantage is Pure's management console. It has been designed so that a storage novice can easily understand how to manage the array without the use of a manual. If you have ever used an iPhone or an iPad you know what I mean. The Pure management console was designed to operate in the same way. I met with a current customer yesterday and he said he doesn't even know if a manual exists for our management console because he has never had a need to find one. Don't believe me, take the 5 minute video demo on our website!

There is a famous quote by John F Kennedy that goes "Change is the law of life. Those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future". Pure Storage is looking to the future and we believe that traditional storage arrays with spinning disks will quickly become a thing of the future.

08/19/2013

How do you improve on a free tool that simplifies storage provisioning for Microsoft workloads and already includes many advanced features such as virtualization, clustering and monitoring? You add support for Microsoft Exchange provisioning, Microsoft Database Availability Groups (DAG) and EMC RecoverPoint management…while still being free of charge!

If you've read my posts before you'll know that I am a HUGE fan of EMC's Storage Integrator or ESI (see Exhibits A, B, C & D). ESI was originally created as a tool to simplify the storage creation and management in a Windows environment. By answering a few simple questions using the wizard based option, ESI will create a new storage LUN, set the proper disk alignment, format the drive and mount it in Windows all in a matter of minutes (or less than a minute). Additional versions provided virtualization support, System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) and Orchestrator (SCO) integration. And now with ESI 3.0, there is extended application and data protection support!

So why include support for Microsoft Exchange? Many customers are deploying consolidated storage for Microsoft Exchange workloads and while Microsoft promotes other server based deployment methods, customers do have large capacity requirements for Exchange and more users are considering virtualization as a way to consolidate all of the different servers especially when creating multiple copies of the database via Database Availability Groups.

ESI 3.0 takes aim at two birds with one stone – helping to simplify the management of storage creation for Exchange environments while also providing easy to use wizard based menus to extend DAG replication with EMC RecoverPoint. Even for customers who have already configured EMC storage for Exchange, ESI provides detailed information about the location of the database and log files such as the storage properties, the log file in use, if a database is being replicated and much more as seen in this screen shot.

Interested in creating a new storage drive for Exchange database and log files? Simply click on the Create Mailbox Database option and follow the wizard as seen in the following screenshot. At the end of the wizard the storage will be created, formatted and mounted with a new Exchange database deployed and available for use.

Creating a Mailbox Database Copy is also an easy process with selections such as specifying the type of replication whether it will be asynchronous or synchronous and then selecting the appropriate source and target pools. Once complete ESI will update the replication status in the main window and will update the Exchange server indicating that the database is being replicated by a non Exchange replication method.

And if you have spent any time with the Exchange management tools in the last few versions you know that Microsoft has made all of the Exchange management operations available via PowerShell and encourages administrators to use these. ESI includes full PowerShell support for all of these operations including creating new mailbox databases, configuring failover or initiating a database failover from one site to another.

ESI 3.0 supports Exchange 2013 or Exchange 2010 SP3 for DAG support and EMC RecoverPoint/SE or EX version 4.0 with the applicable splitters for the EMC storage systems.

06/12/2013

Last week was Microsoft TechEd 2013 and what a show it was! Microsoft announced SQL Server 2014 including in-memory OLTP (or project "Hekaton") in addition to features such as big data analytics. Microsoft also announced changes to their Windows Azure pricing and R2 releases for Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012.

What generated the most buzz at TechEd? Significantly reduced pricing for Microsoft Surface tablets (Pro and RT) resulted in very long lines so attendees could get their hands on these hot items and according to a few people I talked to…then turn around and put them on eBay for a profit (no one ever accused an IT professional of not being smart).

We at EMC had a great week! I was able to meet with many customers and partners! EMC hosted a small intimate dinner with some of our customers on site and I had a great time talking to everyone there! I also had the chance to hang out with some of The Krewe, a great group of guys who get together every year at Microsoft TechEd to hang out, trade stories and build relationships!

The EMC breakout session was PACKED with standing room only! I'm not surprised considering our speaker Txomin Barturen, he is both technical and an excellent speaker. His session (MDC-B391, Practical Implementation of Windows Server 2012 Storage Technologies) covered many of the new features found in Windows Server 2012 and how EMC supports and extends these features. For instance, with ODX or Microsoft's Offloaded Data Transfer EMC has been able to reach transfer speeds of 25 Gigabytes per second! Wow!

Finally, EMC gave away fedora hats with blinking lights that were a hit! We had a huge line at the booth all week and I saw people wearing these hats on Bourbon Street all week and even people wearing them on my airplane ride home! In other words, EMC was everywhere!

05/29/2013

Next week is Microsoft TechEd in New Orleans, LA and we at EMC are busy planning for a great show! TechEd is my favorite tradeshow because of its large size and the different type of people you can meet including infrastructure managers (virtualization, servers, network or storage), application specialists, developers and even IT management.

This year doesn't look like it will disappoint either. Microsoft has 9 different tracks covering everything from Cloud, Datacenter, Collaboration and Social, Windows client and Windows phone. Add in Birds of a Feather, Hands on Labs, Certifications, Ask the Experts, Jam Sessions and much more!

EMC is a platinum sponsor of TechEd and planning a big show as well! At the booth we are showcasing our support and integration for key Microsoft technologies including Hyper-V, System Center, Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track, Windows Server 2012 including ODX and SMB 3.0, Microsoft clustering, Exchange, SQL Server, and SharePoint to name just a few. The EMC booth will be featuring the following demo stations with top EMC specialists for all things EMC and Microsoft:

Accelerate to the Cloud

Flexible/ Cost-Effective Hyper-V Solutions

Optimize Performance with Tiering

Private Cloud Fast Track and EMC VSPEX

Datacenter Management

System Center 2012 Integration

Support for Windows Server 2012 ODX

Dynamically provision Exchange, SQL, SharePoint

Software-Defined Data Center

Deliver Application Aware Management Solutions

Simplify / Automate IT Infrastructure Management

Enable Self-service with policy-based Automation

Application & Cloud Protection

Build a trusted IT infrastructure

Smarter Backup and Archive

Deliver DVR-like recovery to any point in time

Building your schedule for the week? EMC has a breakout session entitled Practical Implementation of Windows Server 2012 Storage Technologies (MDC-B391) on Tuesday, June 4th at 1:30PM. This session will cover many of the new features of Windows Server 2012 and provide a series of demos to show the advantages to using EMC's integration and extension of Microsoft Windows.

EMC has plenty of fun prizes and giveaways planned for the booth! We'll be giving away fedora hats to ensure the attendees walk down Bourbon Street in style. We'll also have a fun prize pad game where you can spin the wheel and see what prize you win! We have plenty of different giveaways for everyone so come by and try your luck!

We'll also have a technical area called the Genius Bar where you can meet with any of the EMC Microsoft Specialists, have a whiteboard conversation or have a customized demo depending on what you are interested in. There will be "Tech Talks" scheduled every 30 minutes in the booth covering a variety of topics on EMC and Microsoft. These tech talks will be delivered by technical specialists and will include whiteboards, demos and dialog with whoever is there!

Finally are you a customer or partner coming to TechEd and you're interested to meet with one of our many Microsoft Specialists or product specialists who will be on-site? Feel free to drop me an email at Adrian.Simays@emc.com and I'll be happy to arrange some scheduled time with EMC! See you there!!

What makes the new mobile data center solution a top 10 product? It is pre-configured as a fully functional compute, network and storage solution allowing customers to have a virtual private cloud up and running in no time. It includes high-availability and disaster recovery so applications remain always available. It can be used as a long-term private cloud solution, as a temporary data center in the event of a disaster or to assist in a data center move.

At the heart of this device is VSPEX, EMC's program that combines the best of breed in virtualization software, server compute, networking stack and EMC storage arrays and backup devices. EMC VSPEX includes solutions for Microsoft workloads including Microsoft SharePoint, Exchange and SQL Server. EMC VSPEX is also key to programs such as the EMC Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track program.

The EMC VSPEX solution allows customers avoid the risks and complexity of building their own cloud infrastructures by providing simple, efficient, and flexible virtualization solutions that scale to meet their needs. VSPEX solutions are designed to provide the utmost in flexibility and because the solutions are tested and validated by EMC, they are proven to work so customers can deploy with them in confidence. Customers can even leverage existing hardware, software, licenses, and skill sets to build a VSPEX that is tailored to their specific needs and environment.

Included in the VSPEX program are technical documents such as solution overview, best practices, detailed technical validation, storage and virtualization design and layout information as well as sizing tools and solution whiteboard videos. In other words, all of the necessary components for EMC's partners to easily build and deploy an end to end fully functional virtual datacenter such as the one by Avent.

And if you're coming to Microsoft TechEd in just under two weeks, be sure to stop by the EMC booth to see and learn more about these solutions at the show! Stay tuned for more updates on Microsoft TechEd in the next few days!

05/03/2013

Earlier this week, EMC's Sam Marraccini wrote a guest blog on Microsoft's SQL Server team site highlighting the benefits of Flash technology with Microsoft SQL Server. In short, flash continues to be a game changer and with the introduction of EMC Xtrem products including XtremSF (PCIe server flash), XtremSW Cache (server side caching) and XtremIO (all Flash array) is helping to improve performance for key application workloads.

When using flash technology to either extend the cache of the storage array or using flash PCIe cards in the server itself (or even better, using both!) – you can dramatically increase the amount of total IOPS while also improving response times to sub-millisecond! Think about that, drive more I\O while significantly improving performance at the same time.

Interested to read more, be sure to check out Sam's blog post and be sure to come to the Solutions Group booth (#1035) or the Xtrem Flash booth at EMC World next week!

04/26/2013

EMC World is just around the corner (May 6-9) and we are busy behind the scenes preparing for a big week! As part of EMC's Solutions Group (ESG), my team is responsible for helping to educate and promote EMC's many Microsoft solutions.

For starters we will be showcasing some key recent EMC solutions as part of the EMC ESG booth (#1035) at EMC World. This year we decided to focus on two major application categories that many customers tend to ask us about: Databases and Collaboration. Specifically we will have demos, publishes best practices and technical information about:

Microsoft SharePoint 2013 & Exchange 2013 (& earlier)

Data Protection including Single Item Level Restore

Virtualized Deployments for Messaging and Collaboration

Multi-site Disaster Recovery

Microsoft SQL Server 2012

Highly Available SQL Server (including AlwaysOn Support)

Xtrem Performance for SQL Databases

End to End SQL Server Data Protection

The ESG booth will be highlighting integration with many key applications including Oracle, SAP and Cloud & Big Data so it will be a chance for attendees to meet with Subject Matter Experts in one place about their business applications.

What's unique about the booth this year is we will have a live art experience taking place all week with a speed painter performing his Paintjam and a contest for someone to win a trip for two to attend any museum in the world! It should be colorful (sorry, couldn't resist)!

There are also many sessions devoted to Microsoft technologies. I'll be presenting a topic entitled "Automate & Provision VNX Storage with Microsoft Private Cloud Fast Track Solutions" where I'll be discussing EMC's continued support for Microsoft virtualization and Private Cloud technologies including Microsoft System Center. The session will cover automation and management orchestrator through our integration with technologies such as Virtual Machine Manager, Operations Manager and Microsoft Orchestrator.

You can find me on Tuesday, May 5th from 5:30-6:30PM in Lando 4201A or Thursday, May 9th from 1:00-2:00 in Palazzo A. Hope to see you there!

Additional sessions I would recommend for my Microsoft friends and followers include:

Powering Microsoft Applications with VNX – this is being delivered by my good friend Stefan Voss from EMC's Unified Division. He is awesome and you won't want to miss this as he discusses in-depth performance and support for key Microsoft workloads! This session will be on Monday, May 4th at 1:00-2:00 and Thursday from 8:30-9:30.

Storage Provisioning, Monitoring & Orchestration of Your Microsoft Applications – another technical wizard and all around great guy, Giri Basava of our Microsoft Partner Engineering team will discuss EMC's Storage Integrator (ESI) for provisioning and managing in a Microsoft environment. Giri is fresh off his presentation at Microsoft's Management Summit (MMS) where he got great feedback! You can catch him on Tuesday from 4:00-5:00 (he's my warm up act) or Thursday May 9th from 1:00-2:00 (which unfortunately you will miss since you'll be in my session). ;-)

And that's just the Microsoft focused sessions; there will be A LOT more on EMC technologies including new updates we can't talk about just yet! We'll also have the Hands-On Labs which have become one of the most popular parts of EMC World!

Are you a partner? Be sure to attend our Global Partner Summit that will be taking place at the same time (as well as EMC's SE Conference with all of our field SEs in town for their own separate training including many Microsoft sessions of their own).

It will be a wild week for sure and a lot of fun! If you are going then be sure to come by the ESG booth and say hi, I'll be there most of the week! If you're not going, then hurry up and register and book that flight to Vegas!

04/16/2013

During the last several years virtualization has taken the center stage and become one of the key enabler technologies for private cloud deployments across many different IT shops. From customers who prefer to deploy their services in-house, as there is still much reluctance to embrace public clouds, primarily due to the short comings in public cloud SLAs, to those customers who need to have full control over their data.

While virtualization does facilitate asset consolidation and provide great hardware ROI, it does bring many new challenges such as management and monitoring. As the consolidation of the hardware and software bring the convergence of heterogeneous technologies together in our data centers, we must now find a way to manage this convergence of elements that were previously managed individually

Until recently, there have been various different management and provisioning offerings that only provide only a partial view into private cloud deployments; but as the heterogeneous technologies come together, it drives the need for better monitoring capabilities and the landscape of tools has changed.

We are going through an awesome change in the industry. We are looking to make decisions on how to take advantage of cloud computing deployments, how to embrace it and the single most important part of this trend is your management strategy.

As the consumerization of IT assets is changing, technology providers need to change their approach and integration of the technologies that enable private clouds and that is what EMC has done.

This blog is going to talk about these management solutions.

I had a chance to participate and represent EMC at this year's Microsoft Management Summit 2013 in Las Vegas, Nevada. From talking with various attendees, the single largest challenge was the discovery and management of datacenter assets within their own deployments.

Another challenge widely discussed was the automation of provisioning processes, and the efficiency that needs to be adopted as part of this new technology consumption that takes place in private clouds

In my technical lecture I spoke about the key ingredients that must be part of any private cloud deployment which are: Automated Provisioning, Intelligent Monitoring and Efficient Management.

The strategic response EMC has provided to those customers seeking this effectiveness can be found within the technology features now provided by "EMC Storage Integrator" or ESI. It facilitates provisioning integrated with the automation provided by System Center Orchestrator and it's layered by monitoring capabilities found in our System Center Operation Manager management packs.

Taking apart ESI and what it provides customers, we are now able to empower our end users to finally see a view of their assets mapping in a way it can be effectively monitored, viewed and managed. We have been able to take that technology convergence, extend our monitoring layer and extend the necessary management capabilities into these technology assets.

I have repeatedly mentioned the convergence of storage, server & application in your private clouds, but what is more important is the ability our customers have to eliminate the need of requiring multiple resources to manage heterogeneous environments with one single tool.

Server and storage consolidation means you're running multiple workloads on a single shared hardware environment, and this was equated in the past that you're not going to get that same performance as if that workload was being deployed on a physical environment. Hardware has changed and improved so much that we have been able to address these performance issues from a design perspective, but what if performance or provisioning issues were to come from other sources? Wouldn't it be nice to have a proactive mechanism that allows you to have insight into your utilization and be able to give you the necessary alerts as issues are happening? That is exactly what EMC's ESI is doing with its integration with SCOM, and now allows us to depart from being reactive, to getting ahead of the issues.

As we now enter a new chapter of more sophisticated monitoring tools, we are now in the driver's seat and can begin to design data centers in our private clouds that will adapt for faster and more unpredictable changes.

While other vendors are focused on storage topologies and connectivity protocols, I view that the key ingredients to a successful private cloud are automated provisioning, intelligent monitoring and efficient management. Combining these elements with technology that drives consolidation and effective utilization of share resources, our customer's will be enabled to deploy their private clouds very efficiently.